This study examines educational and labor outcomes of children affected by a ban on abortions. I use evidence from Romania, where in 1966 dictator Nicolae Ceausescu declared abortion and family planning illegal. Birth rates doubled in 1967 because formerly abortion had been the primary method of birth control. Children born after the abortion ban attained more years of schooling and greater labor market success. This is because urban, educated women were more likely to have abortions prior to the policy change, and the relative number of children born to this type of woman increased after the ban. However, controlling for composition using observable background variables, children born after the ban on abortions had worse educational and labor market achievements as adults. Additionally, I provide evidence of crowding in the schooling system and some suggestive evidence that cohorts born after the introduction of the abortion ban had higher infant mortality and increased criminal behavior later in life. While in the short-run the abortion ban differentially increased fertility of more educated women, in the long-run the ban differentially increased fertility among less educated women. This suggests that educated women changed their behavior more drastically as a result of the ban.

This paper investigates the effect of the supply of birth control methods on fertility behavior by examining Romania’s 23-year period of pronatalist policies. Following the lifting of the restrictions in 1989 the immediate decrease in fertility was 30 percent. Women who spent most of their reproductive years under the restrictive regime experienced increases in life-cycle fertility of about 0.5 children. Less-educated women had bigger increases in fertility after policy implementation and larger fertility decreases following the lifting of restrictions. These findings suggest that access to abortion and birth control are significant determinants of fertility levels, particularly for less-educated women.